4D (Clin)

Question 1

Assessing abnormality : 4Ds

Deviance (WITH EXAMPLE)

Answer 1

A person’s thinking or behaviour is classified as abnormal if it violets the (unwritten) rules about what is expected or acceptable behaviour in a particular social group e.g. shouting at someone in public without a reason

Question 2

Assessing abnormality : 4Ds

Dysfunction (WITH EXAMPLE)

Answer 2

When the behaviour is significantly interfering with everyday tasks and living your life. Unable to coper with demands of everday life e.g. looking after yourself, holding down a jobm maintaining relationships etc

Question 3

Assessing abnormality : 4Ds

Distress (WITH EXAMPLE)

Answer 3

When a behaviour causes anxiety, negative feeling (fear, confusion, unhappy) towards other people who coem into contact or something. They occur inappropriately and persist longer than they should e.g. exam anxiety is normal but generalised anxiety disorder is not normal

Question 4

Assessing abnormality : 4Ds

Danger (WITH EXAMPLE)

Answer 4

Consits of two broad themes - danger to self and danger to others (excessive risk)

• danger to self, e.g. jumping from a height not purpose of a job
• danger to others, e.g. schizophrenia, auditory hallusination telling to harm another individual

Question 5

EVALUATION

Evaluate one strength of the 4Ds

Answer 5

Helps to avoid erroneous diagnosis

I - The use of 4Ds help prevent incorrect diagnosis.
J - For example, if only used deviance then many behaviour that is eccentric/rare though harmless to individual + others might be falsely diagnosed. On other hand, perhaps symptoms of depression may be missed as they affect large minority of society.
E - Therefore, using 4Ds in combination useful as allows clinicians to determine if patient’s behaviour requires further investigation using classification systems.

Question 6

EVALUATION

Evaluate a second strength of the 4Ds

Answer 6

Each of 4Ds can be aligned with symptoms in the DSM-V and ICD-10

I - Each of 4Ds can be aligned with symptoms in DSM-V and ICD-10 + used in conjunction showing they useful when diagnosing mental health disorders.
J - Different disorders tend to display different combinations of Ds, for example schizophrenia has a combination of deviance (hallucinations) + dysfunction (delusions affecting daily life).
E - demonstrates that each of 4Ds are actively involved in diagnosis process alongside most common manuals to decide whether diagnosis is appropriate.

Question 7

EVALUATION

Evaluate one weakness of the 4Ds

Answer 7

Labelling

I - Labelling lead to stigmatisation of people with mental health issues.
J - For example, using danger as criteria leads to perception that people with mental health issues are dangerous. Fazel et al (2009) found most people with schizophrenia not actually more dangerous than people without the diagnosis
E - This then can lead to people not seeking treatment for fear of being unfairly labelled, or even self-fulfilling prophecies (stereotypes lead people to act in the way predicted by the stereotype).

Question 8

EVALUATION

Evaluate a second weakness of the 4Ds

Answer 8

Risk of subjectivity

I - There may be subjectivity in utilising 4Ds as method of diagnosis as definitions of behaviour not standardised way of measuring health.
J - What considered “dysfunctional” or “dangerous” may differ for each clinician. Some people may think taking a day off is dysfunctional, where another sees it as acceptable behaviour.
E - This lack of objective measurement can lead to different professionals making different diagnoses, potentially leading to incorrect diagnoses and subsequent treatments.

However, using statistical deviance can give an objective measure of when a behaviour is abnormal so is a more scientific, useful approach to diagnosing a mental health disorder than other factors such as distress.